As you may have read from the earlier announcement that's been moved off to the announcement archive, we are making some huge changes to the site over the summer.

This thread will outline the changes as they are coming and updates!

Some stuff to look forward to:

Account Options:
- Awesome Profiles (with ability to customize your own design or choose from a series of pre-designed profile layouts)
- More detailed profile information! Add a lot more info about yourself than what we currently have.
- Friends and Ignore lists
- You can now comment on people's profiles!

Forum Features:
- New custom forum. We will no longer be using phpBB or any other existing forum software for that matter. Unique code written by Dogcow (originally for his own site) and tweaked for our use.
- Quick Reply on all forum threads.
- Better methods to track your threads and posts.
(I will look into getting more BBcodes for us before launch!)

Site Features:
- Arcade: Play games to earn site currency.
- Improved Gachapon: Just small improvements, but they are improvements!
- Galleries for uploading your art and photos. Easier to use on the site!
- Fanclubs: Smaller groups that are user-moderated for more specific topics.

In addition:
New Website Design and complete design overhaul! - We've used this design for years, and it's time to change it up and make it more modern and better accessible for mobile users.

This site design was made in 2008, and at that time, smartphones were less common. I didn't actually use one until 2011! The internet was a different place back then and the site needs to change to meet with more modern times.

That said, if older members decide to come back once this is complete, they will be granted with an entirely new and different experience! Though we will do our best to try to keep things similar for our membership that's stuck with us for awhile and is used to how things currently are.

We are also putting good effort into improving the new user registration page and new user experience. This will make it easier for new people to get into an avatar and started on their journey through the world of Avaricia.

I just read a lot of things. o3o But these are prolly what stood out to me most.

I like to type lots. >_> So my tl;dr is, I'm excited for this upcoming new shit but also got the brakes on a couple of things too. *nods*

Bobbi wrote:

Forum Features:
- New custom forum. We will no longer be using phpBB or any other existing forum software for that matter. Unique code written by Dogcow (originally for his own site) and tweaked for our use.

Hot damn. That sounds freaking amazing. I love the concept that it'll be a layout and format not used by any other website (well, avatar-forum website since Dogcow uses it for his own >_>).

Bobbi wrote:

Site Features:
- Arcade: Play games to earn site currency.
- Improved Gachapon: Just small improvements, but they are improvements!
- Galleries for uploading your art and photos. Easier to use on the site!
- Fanclubs: Smaller groups that are user-moderated for more specific topics.

Well, actually I don't give a flying fuck about an arcade. *uses non-existent strikeout tags for that one* This is mostly cause I do believe that currency should be 95% earned via posting on the forums, so I hope currency earning via arcade games will be at a very low rate with few games. >_>;;

Am definitely excited to see what sort of improvements to Gachapon will occur cause I do think some are needed. >_>;;

Love the idea of a gallery. Though I'd need more info on the security and privacy aspect of it first before I'd jump into using it. >_>;;

The concept behind the ¨fanclubs¨ sounds great but I hope it'll get a name change before the final release. I think ¨fanclub¨ doesn't describe what it sounds like the intention for the way that feature is intended to be used as. If that makes sense. o3o;; But good concept to implement with the new site. :)

Bobbi wrote:

In addition:

This site design was made in 2008, and at that time, smartphones were less common. I didn't actually use one until 2011! The internet was a different place back then and the site needs to change to meet with more modern times.

Hahahahaaa. I'm with you in that boat, Bobbi. I didn't get my first smartphone till 2013. XD And it's prolly made me worse cause I'm a bit addicted to it now. D: Am happy for a better mobile site cause my smartphone-addicted self would love to use it more. :)

@Lissy:
I'm probably going to change the header artwork entirely. I'd like to make something a little more complex as far as what you see, but we will probably have new morning, afternoon, evening and night images to start out with.

@Arikana:

New Forums: It looks and feels simlar to phpbb since Dogcow is quite familiar with it, but it's his own unique backend. Frontend probably won't have too many drastic differences but it will be quite clear that we are no longer using the same thing.

Arcade: It's something that people have been requesting for a long time as well as something that people have complained about for a long time. Not everyone will use it. Honestly, I never really play games on sites like this to earn currency. I'd always do art shops or vend as it was a more productive use of my time. But it's one thing that we are severely lacking compared to everywhere else. That said, we'll always encourage posting on the site as a better means of earning currencies.

Gacha: Any suggestions? Right now, it's entirely randomized in what it gives out. We definitely need to add more items to it but there are a lot of items that need to be made everywhere and not enough people to make them lol. But it will show a picture and item description when you win an item plus I'll probably give it a visual upgrade.

Gallery: Right now, I think the gallery may be public, but Dogcow might have a better word on that? We can definitely add settings to it. We figured it would be a good way though for people to show all their avi arts, art of their RP characters, original art, and pictures for different threads. But any idea what you would use it for if otherwise?

Fanclubs: Honestly it's a name I just came up with out of nowhere. On Dogcow's site they are called Suburbs. That title might work out for us given the storyline/environment, but I wasn't 100% sure if we should go with that name or not. It's still in the air right now.

Heck yes. I can't wait for a new header image cause I feel kinda bored with the current one dating back to way before long hiatus from here. >_>;; But then again, I get bored pretty easy and I like shiny pictures. o3o Though maybe for a funsies kinda thing, you could also use the header image as a forum game -ish? As in very, very subtly blend/hide in some site related images that have nothing to do with the header and whoever finds them gets prizes? And have like three to five per image and people can only win with one image?

Forums: Oh, okay. That's definitely reassuring that it'll be different yet still feel and look the same for the most part. :) And while I am curious about the “unique backend”, it'll probably be pointless for it to be explained to me when I don't understand code. :(

Arcade: Fair enough. As long as posting still earns more currency than the arcade, sounds good. I do have to agree that it would be nice to see the games section on here be expanded as it is rather lacking at the moment. I was and will always remain concerned that it could potentially gain too much focus on from a “back of house” point of view.

Gachapon: I agree that a visual upgrade would be amazing to have. In terms of suggestions, while I have many I'll list a couple for now as I don't know how doable they will be in the short term for the time being. ^^;; That and my dear brain likes to continually churn out random creative shit and dump them into a pile, so the rest of me needs to sort through it. >_>
1) Perhaps have two or three types of gachapons? One that gives out random the cheap/basic shop items, very common Gachapon-specific items, and of course random amount of credits. Another that gives out medium priced commons, medium rarity Gachapon-specific items, and random amounts of credits or jades (70/30, respective, split on frequency of the currencies). And a third that gives out commons (that are not the uber expensive ones but still way more expensive than being “medium priced”), high rarity Gachapon-specific items, and random amounts of jades.
So technically there'd be three types of tokens and the odds of earning tokens would depend on which machine it is. In addition, allow them to be collectible and clicking on them when they appear only collects them. This way they can be spent whenever they want and they don't expire as well. I think this will also give a more realistic feel as it will allow more freedom of choice in using Gachapon tokens as well as simply having the knowledge that once claimed, Gachapon tokens cannot leave you unless you use them even after the day changes to the next. In this way, the rarer Gachapon tokens can also be used as potential prizes in future event contests as well.
2) If suggestion one isn't used, perhaps a code that will limit the acquisition of certain items once the token-user's inventory already has more than a certain amount of a particular item?

Gallery: I'd probably use it for things similar to that which you've listed thus far, however I also don't like to constantly show everything off at once and it would be nice to be able to individually select which items to be public or private every now and then. In addition, if the site hopefully does become much more active again in the future, I'd love to do some user-run community funsies and it'd be a good place to keep back ups of images or the answer keys or scoreboards; some of which do need to be private and when not being used, all of it needs to be private.

Fanclubs: Oooh, I like the idea of suburbs. Not only does it go well with the comic storyline but it gives it a homey feel too. Though, perhaps a more comic-y feel would be to call them Dome Cities (or Communities would be a good replacement for 'Cities' as well). *nods*

When it comes to Gacha, we've got some backend systems in place that will allow for rare item grants. We just don't have it implemented in the front end quite yet. They'd be like random boxes you would find while browsing the site and they would contain rarer items. Or during events, they might pop up more often and grant you something special for the event.

Right now, our only means of distributing items is through Gacha and shops, but I want to expand this more to more random item grants, and more games.

The gallery has privacy settings. You can set individual pictures to be hidden. So then only the user and his/her friends can see it. You can also set entire gallery categories to be private within a suburb.

When it comes to Gacha, we've got some backend systems in place that will allow for rare item grants. We just don't have it implemented in the front end quite yet. They'd be like random boxes you would find while browsing the site and they would contain rarer items. Or during events, they might pop up more often and grant you something special for the event.

Right now, our only means of distributing items is through Gacha and shops, but I want to expand this more to more random item grants, and more games.

Hm, interesting. I suppose I'll wait until this releases before I say anything more for now. It's still early and at this point I'm gonna need to know more before I comment/critique my thoughts on the new/modified/updated system. :3

Oh wow! This is all super exciting to read about. Very nice! The whole new forum code is jaw dropping, I appreciate this. Thank you for your guys hard work and I can't wait to see this all come to fruition.